Search form

New Zealand

In Field Dates:

25 Feb 2016 to 29 Mar 2016

10 Mar 2016 to 15 Mar 2016

There was no significant change in flag preference from the previous survey conducted in Late February.
Younger New Zealanders are the keenest to retain the flag.
Political polarisation is again very evident. A narrow majority of National voters now intend to vote for change but big majorities of other voters are voting for retention.

Despite the Prime Minister's comments it is unlikely that Malcolm Turnbull would be satisfied with John Key's limited policy ambitions.

Malcolm Turnbull said his New Zealand counterpart John Key was a role model in his first press conference as Prime Minister. He described Key as "achieving very significant economic reforms in New Zealand … by taking on and explaining complex issues and then making the case for them".

In Field Dates:

27 Oct 2015 to 9 Nov 2015

On first preferences the red and blue Lockwood fern design (on 35%) is ahead of the blue and black fern (on 33%).
Red Peak sits in third with 17% of respondents giving it their first preference – the proportion similar to the October survey.
Applying the preferential voting system the red and blue fern edges out the blue and black fern, but this result is within the margin of error.

Tags:

UMR Research Director Stephen Mills describes how terrorism has influenced politics – both in New Zealand and in Australia (Dominion Post April 9 2015)

The impact of terrorism has played a part in many Western elections since 9/11.

In 2001 Australian Prime Minister John Howard was heading for likely election defeat.

He instead secured a comfortable victory by taking full advantage of the tense and fearful political climate that developed when the issue of (mainly Muslim) asylum seekers combined with the aftermath of 9/11.

Tags:

In 1947 Winston Churchill famously declared "it has been said that democracy is the worst form of government except all the others that have been tried''. It would take a brave person to disagree with him.

But then he had not seen how hard it is for elected Governments now to undertake even the most necessary reforms if those challenge major business interests or impose any significant cost or inconvenience on voters generally.

It is unlikely Winston Churchill would have imagined that one day there would be a salary packaging industry.